


the sum of his parts

by buckstiel



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Captain America: The First Avenger, Multi, One-Sided James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers - Freeform, One-Sided Steve Rogers/Howard Stark, Pining, Rough Sex, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 11:09:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3444878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckstiel/pseuds/buckstiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The bitterness swells despite themselves--it's only right to shift it out of their captain's path. </p><p>(Or: WWII Team America is the unhealthiest Team America.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the sum of his parts

**Author's Note:**

> I blame the Agent Carter finale.

i.

The buzzing lamps hanging from the ceilings give the SSR base a rich glow about it, and a halo pushes around the edges of Rogers and Carter--he’s studying the profile of her face, the slope of her nose as she points out something on the map tacked to the wall.

The wrench slips through Howard’s fingers and onto his toes. He’s too far across the room for them to hear the curses that fall afterwards, and it’s just as well. Just as well.

“You might wanna try gripping it a little tighter.” Barnes has shown up out of nowhere, leaning against a pillar on the other side of the work table. He’s looking at them too. Howard notes the scuff on the tips of his shoes, the wrinkled shirt, the hollows under his eyes.

“Yeah, well, what can you do sometimes?” he huffs back, and the bit of broken machinery before him regains his attention. But the wrench is the wrong size, and so is the next one he tries after that. And the next. “Gravity is an asshole.”

“Sure is.” He’s still staring.

ii.

Howard finds Barnes in a back corner by the record shelves, a box at his feet whose cardboard hasn’t yet grown soft in the corners. Even hunched over, casting a shadow on the file splayed  across his lap, Howard can read the _Project Rebirth_ in the corner.

Page eight, the befores and afters. An old photo from Camp Lehigh pressed between his thumb and first finger.

“You were the head of this?” he asks.

“Sure was.”

“Guess my chicken soup didn’t have enough…” He squints at the text. “Vitarays. Or whatever.” He shrugs, sighs, tosses the records back in the box. Doesn’t say another word as he rounds back to the command center.

Beneath the shuffled papers, Howard tucks the latest mission report, and his thumb runs over the one visible sentence after it’s joined the pile. _Captain Rogers saved over 1000 men. Captain Rogers saved over 1000 men._

_saved saved saved--_

iii.

He’s got one eye turned to flirt with the girl pouring his fourth whiskey and one preoccupied with the scene developing at the other end of the bar: Carter trying not to roll her eyes at the Commandos’ off-key singing over their beer steins, Rogers and Barnes talking lowly at the next table over.

The whiskey hits the back of his throat hot, an Old Fashioned with extra bitters.

They’ve been there for hours, and the short glass rounded by Barnes’ fingers hasn’t come up to his mouth once. The ice is all but melted, and they can’t seem to say a word to each other without staring first. Their faces get close to fight the noise and there’s a rise to their cheeks that shows a smile without lips moving once.

But Rogers’ head turns without warning--Carter’s said something, gets his attention, and he places one hand on Barnes’ shoulder before falling onto the bar stool beside her, leaning into her shoulder with a tiny flash of teeth. She returns it, and something burns in Howard’s chest from the way the blush creeps up Rogers’ neck.

Barnes grins, makes a face at Jones, but it falters when he thinks no one’s looking, a bunch of sticks propped up in a hurricane.

iv.

He and Barnes walk home together that night, Rogers and Carter having already disappeared and the Commandos’ tabs not quite finished. The air is cool but hangs thick with a coming rainstorm and the chill seeps right through the fabric of their clothes.

“We’ve done everything together, you know,” Barnes says slowly, right at the edge of slurring. “Since we were kids. Only fits we go to war together too.”

Barnes dives right into an odd recollection of a moment from their childhood, plot weak with the weight of liquor, but Howard doesn’t listen, not completely. He hears Rogers’ name in Rogers’ own ancient history and the statistics pop up in his head. Weight, blood type, resting heart rate. Metabolism, cholesterol. The chest that thickened up all golden on the inside and out, and his own thin hands that helped build it.

Barnes keeps talking about all the things they could never keep in a neat little file on that back shelf, no Top Secret stamp on the lid, not officially.

“Y’hear what I said?”

Somehow they’ve gotten to their floor of the abandoned hotel the SSR had commandeered, and Barnes is half-squinting at him with one hand on the doorknob to the room he and Steve share.

“I said”--and Barnes’ voice gets rough, but not angry, just low with the effort of toeing the line of silence--“I see the way you look at him.”

“And how’s that?”

_(Like you?)_

“Like you know you’ll never get him.”

_(So exactly like you.)_

Something flashes behind Barnes’ eyes while scorching back up through Howard’s ribs, bitter stagnant fumes from the bar igniting--the clicking twist of the doorknob and the hitch of the door closing behind them, all that tumbling in his ear as shirts fall to the ground, buttons popping off their threads. There’s a set of teeth digging carefully into his shoulder muscle, and his thoughts stutter around Barnes’ belt fighting his hands as it pulls through the loops of his pants.

There’s something satisfying in the way Barnes holds him down by his shoulders, by the way he can still reach up and touch that chest above him and feel a near-similar, an almost familiarity. It’s hot under his fingers, burning like a lamp that’s just blown out.

Barnes is glaring at him, but just slightly. “Fuck you,” he mutters.

“That’s fine.” He breaks from the loosened hold, reaches up around the back of Barnes’ neck and pulls his face down--down away from his face, back to his neck, and he can feel the sharp indents, the redness sprouting there.

They move together and it’s rough. Howard worries at a long deep scratch on his arm after it’s over, and he watches Barnes button his shirt.

“What’s it like being that close with him?” he asks before he can stop himself.

Barnes doesn’t answer, not immediately, and for a moment he thinks he didn’t hear him, but of course Howard’s not that lucky. “You honestly think I got enough time to tell you with this war on?”

v.

They don’t talk about it.

The Howling Commandos arrive back at the SSR base, chatter flying about the reckless stunt Rogers pulled, and eventually Howard would feel the singular tug at a belt loop, the back of his shirt collar. Then he’d be pressed up against the cleaning supplies in the back closet as Barnes chewed at his bottom lip, pulled his chest flush against his, nails threatening to break skin. Sweat mixes in with the dirt he hasn’t bothered to wash off yet.

Carter and Rogers would share a smirk across the briefing table and they wouldn’t bother fully clearing all the tools off the back table of the lab. The plastic hilt of a screwdriver digs into the small of Howard’s back, a bolt pushes into the soft skin of Barnes’ cheek.

Sometimes they share a drink at whatever pub the SSR can find that isn’t burned to rubble, and they watch the others from a distance, but not too far. Everything is fine.

They don’t talk about it.

vi.

Three dominoes fall: a body, a plane, and an empty liquor bottle.

There’s a map on the wall spinning on its own axis, red lines between the Alps and the Arctic dotted with question marks. Howard’s hand grips a crumpled paper peppered with clumsy math, sums of body counts and bodies saved. The numbers are spinning too hard to check for a net positive, but he can see the red, the negative there. He can feel it in his bones.

 


End file.
